Not necessarily. My 12g ran better than my 38.
Stop with the turf scrubber. It's not needed in that size tank. Then stop dosing. Water changes.
Thought the same thing.
When it comes to OP like that, I am speechless. There is another thread fron R2R, OP is ask for help and guess what, he won't listen to anyone but his coral are keeping dying. No wonder so many people drop out of this wonderful hobby after 3 months or so.
This hobby isn't very intuitive. It fools you into thinking you have to struggle and overcome great complexity when in reality, you really don't. This is how I've ran tanks ranging from ten gallons to forty seven gallons: I did a small water change every week and if I saw nuisance algae growing on stuff, I removed it in the process. If I saw the sand and rocks getting "dusty" with what I thought was fine algae back then, I just used a turkey baster to blast it off/stirred the sand and skipped that week's water change. That's literally it. I didn't carbon dose back then. I didn't run an ATS. I didn't send my water off for ICP testing and dose this and that desperately trying to hit the water parameter equivalent of landing an f-18 super hornet on the rolling deck of an aircraft carrier. Oh no, my aluminum is too high! Wave off! wave off! I JUST DID WATER CHANGES and adjusted the percentage based on how "dirty" the tank looked. Sure, it sounds boring and low-tech but it worked for me again and again on different systems. Now that becomes trickier to pull off on large tanks. I get that. But for most of us with a sub-90 gallon system, it's just one of those things where if you do ONE thing wrong, the tank will suffer for it. When you do eighteen billion different things thinking you're making the tank perform better, you're usually just adding more chances to do something wrong and negatively impact the tank. Just my 2C. My first reef tank (32 bowfront). Water changes only, low-tier equipment such as finnex ray II led lighting and pretty much zero testing TBH. (Ah those were the days).
I say so in a "not readily learned or understood sense". There's so much to this hobby TO learn, but trying to do so early on creates a situation where reefers can drastically overcomplicate maintenance, leading to failure. It takes time of doing the absolutely most basic things, understanding WHY you're doing them and then slowly going down the rabbit hole vs. diving down it head first.
Quick question. Is that a clam in the lower part in the middle of the tank?
Your parameters are certainly not perfectly ideal but they wouldn't kill anything that quick. It's possible there is some random metal or something leeching into the water. Have you tried anything like polyfilter to remove those things?I just can't figure out what's wrong with my tank. I tried keeping coral 10 years ago and they all died without me ever figuring out the problem. I figured I'd try again this year, but my coral are dying and I can't figure it out again.
I got a 10 gallon tank and cycled it for 2 months in the dark. No diatoms or cyano ever broke out. It went perfectly. Ammonia converted to nitrate within hours.
Set Up:
AI Prime HD: 25% for UV, Royal Blue, Violet, and Blue for 7 hours with 1 hour for ramp up and another hour for ramp down; 10% whites for 2 hours with 30 min ramp up and down time.
Algae turf scrubber: For nutrient export. Since I'm not keeping any fish, shrimp, crabs, snails, etc., I'm dosing Red Sea AB+ and Brightwell Nitrate and phosphate to keep nutrients up.
Parameters:
Temp: 78F (using Inkbird temp controller)
Nitrates: 30-40 ppm (using Hanna Checker)
Phosphate: 0.10-0.20 ppm (using Hanna Checker)
dKH: ~8
SG: 1.023 (increasing this slowly to 1.024)
Livestock:
GSP: Almost dead within a few months
Zoas: Some open, other frags closed, and 2 frags completely died
Ricordea Florida: 1 bleached and didn't survive, another bleached but hanging in there. All other ricordea lost some bubbles and became smooth and dark blue (see photos)
Rhodactis Mushroom: 1 bleached, one doing very well, and one lost it's texture and became smooth (see before and after photo below).
Candy Crush mushroom: died within a month
St. Thomas Mushroom: Doing very well.
Before:
After:
Don’t get discouraged you are literally playing the roll of Mother Nature and god at the same time. It’s not an easy hobby or cheap but it is well worth it. Though smaller tanks are harder to keep the parameters in check it’s possible a lot of people do it. The best advice I can give is study your tank, log the parameters, track the trends and ask for help and from here you will learn from your mistakes and enjoy it at the same time. Good luck!I just can't figure out what's wrong with my tank. I tried keeping coral 10 years ago and they all died without me ever figuring out the problem. I figured I'd try again this year, but my coral are dying and I can't figure it out again.
I got a 10 gallon tank and cycled it for 2 months in the dark. No diatoms or cyano ever broke out. It went perfectly. Ammonia converted to nitrate within hours.
Set Up:
AI Prime HD: 25% for UV, Royal Blue, Violet, and Blue for 7 hours with 1 hour for ramp up and another hour for ramp down; 10% whites for 2 hours with 30 min ramp up and down time.
Algae turf scrubber: For nutrient export. Since I'm not keeping any fish, shrimp, crabs, snails, etc., I'm dosing Red Sea AB+ and Brightwell Nitrate and phosphate to keep nutrients up.
Parameters:
Temp: 78F (using Inkbird temp controller)
Nitrates: 30-40 ppm (using Hanna Checker)
Phosphate: 0.10-0.20 ppm (using Hanna Checker)
dKH: ~8
SG: 1.023 (increasing this slowly to 1.024)
Livestock:
GSP: Almost dead within a few months
Zoas: Some open, other frags closed, and 2 frags completely died
Ricordea Florida: 1 bleached and didn't survive, another bleached but hanging in there. All other ricordea lost some bubbles and became smooth and dark blue (see photos)
Rhodactis Mushroom: 1 bleached, one doing very well, and one lost it's texture and became smooth (see before and after photo below).
Candy Crush mushroom: died within a month
St. Thomas Mushroom: Doing very well.
Before:
After:
Are you suggesting that doing water changes weekly will cause instability?
IF YOU STOP DOSING NITRATES AND PHOSPHATES YOU WOULDN'T NEED THE ATS!
Are you sure about this? If you stopped dosing entirely, and removed the turf scrubber, you would have out-of-control nitrates? Did you actually experience this with this tank? What is your reef roid feeding schedule? Photosynthetic corals really, really don't need that much food. In fact, they often don't need any food at all. I get the impression that you are either feeding WAY to much or just preemptively preparing for a problem that doesn't exist.
If keeping fish were really the mistake here, than how do 99.9% of reefers successfully keep fish with corals? It sounds like the problem was overfeeding the fish (or something else, who knows). The mistake was not that you had fish, the mistake was how you took care of the fish. Lots of people have reefs the same size as yours with fish and without a scrubber with no tank crashes.
As other people have mentioned, nitrates and phosphates this high are not ideal, but probably not the main issue. If I had readings like that in my tank I would probably take some small steps to reduce those numbers a tad, nothing drastic though. However, you do realize that the reason the nitrate and phosphate are that high while running the scrubber is because you are dosing, right? It makes literally zero sense to run the scrubber AND dose nitrate and phosphate. It's like trying to wash dishes in a sink filled with pasta sauce.
